Brokeback Mountain
ブロークバック・マウンテン
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
Two Wyoming ranch hands over twenty years and the marriages they hide inside.
Wyoming, 1963. Ennis Del Mar, a taciturn ranch hand, and Jack Twist, a rodeo rider, are hired by Joe Aguirre to herd sheep all summer on Brokeback Mountain. Alone for weeks, they become friends, and after a night of heavy drinking they have sex in their tent. They agree it was a one-off. It is not. When the job ends early, they come to blows and part with no promise to meet again.
Ennis marries his fiancée, Alma, and they have two daughters. When Jack returns the next summer, Aguirre, who saw what went on between them, will not hire him. In Texas Jack marries Lureen Newsome, a rodeo rider whose rich father belittles him; they have a son. Four years on, Jack visits Ennis, and Alma sees them kiss. Jack asks for a life together on a ranch of their own. Ennis refuses. He will not leave his family, and he cannot forget the body his father took him to see as a boy: a man tortured and killed on suspicion of being homosexual.
For years they meet on 'fishing trips' while their marriages wear thin. When Ennis divorces, Jack drives up hoping they can live together at last; Ennis says no again, and Jack goes to Mexico and pays for sex with men. At Thanksgiving Alma, now remarried, confronts Ennis about Jack. On their last trip, Ennis says work will keep him away for months. They argue, Ennis blames Jack for what his life has become, and Jack holds him while he weeps.
A postcard Ennis sends comes back stamped 'Deceased'. On the phone Lureen tells him Jack was killed when a tyre exploded; as she speaks, Ennis pictures men beating Jack to death with a tyre iron. Jack wanted his ashes scattered on the mountain, but his father will bury him in the family plot. In Jack's childhood room Ennis finds the shirt he thought he had lost on the mountain, hanging inside Jack's, and Jack's mother lets him keep them. Years later, alone in a trailer, Ennis promises his daughter Alma Jr. he will come to her wedding. Then he looks at the two shirts in his closet, Jack's now inside his own, beside a postcard of the mountain, and says, 'Jack, I swear.'
Starring
Heath Ledgeras Ennis Del Mar
A taciturn Wyoming ranch hand who loves Jack for twenty years and cannot let himself live with him.
Ennis Del Mar’s story
Ennis was orphaned young and left school early. After the summer on the mountain he marries Alma and has two daughters. When Jack turns up four years later they kiss, and Alma sees. Ennis will not leave his family, and he still sees the body his father took him to look at as a boy, so fishing trips become the only place they meet. After his divorce he again refuses to live with Jack, and cuts off Alma when she confronts him at Thanksgiving. On their last trip he blames Jack for his life and breaks down in his arms. After Jack's death he takes home the two shirts from Jack's boyhood room. Years later, alone in a trailer, he promises Alma Jr. he will come to her wedding, and says to the shirts, 'Jack, I swear.'
Jake Gyllenhaalas Jack Twist
A rodeo rider who marries into money in Texas and keeps asking Ennis for a life together.
Jack Twist’s story
On a freezing night Jack insists that Ennis share his tent, and he makes the first move; from then on he is the one who keeps coming back. The next summer Aguirre will not hire him. In Texas he marries Lureen, has a son and sells for her father, who belittles him. Four years later he asks Ennis to start a small ranch with him; Ennis says no. When Ennis divorces, Jack drives up again, is turned away, and pays for sex with men in Mexico. On their last trip he holds Ennis as he weeps. Lureen says a tyre exploded; Ennis pictures men beating him to death. Jack wanted his ashes scattered on Brokeback, but his father buries him in the family plot, and says Jack had planned to bring another man up from Texas to run the ranch.
Michelle Williamsas Alma Beers Del Mar
Ennis's wife, who sees him kiss Jack and lives with that knowledge through the slow end of their marriage.
Alma Beers Del Mar’s story
Alma marries Ennis in November 1963, after his summer on the mountain, and they have two daughters, Alma Jr. and Jenny; she works at a grocery store. Four years in, she sees him kiss Jack, and says nothing. For years she watches him leave on fishing trips. Once she ties a note to the end of his line, 'Hello, Ennis, bring some fish home', and finds it still tied there when he comes back. She divorces him in 1975, takes the girls and marries Monroe, the manager of her grocery store. At Thanksgiving in her new home she at last tells Ennis what she knows, spitting out 'Jack Nasty' for his friend. He turns on her in a fury, and after that he stops seeing her. It is the last time the film shows her.
Anne Hathawayas Lureen Newsome Twist
A Texas rodeo rider and a rich man's daughter, who marries Jack and later runs the family business.
Randy Quaidas Joe Aguirre
The rancher who hires Ennis and Jack for the summer, sees what happens between them, and will not hire Jack again.
Kate Maraas Alma Del Mar Jr.
Ennis's daughter, who comes to his trailer years later to tell him she is getting married.
Why it matters
Brokeback Mountain was widely called the gay cowboy movie. What it shows is narrower and harder: twenty years in which two men who love each other can meet only on fishing trips, because one of them learned as a boy what happens to men like them and has never stopped believing it. The film counts the cost to everyone inside the secret, including the wives, who see more than they are ever told. It won the Golden Lion at Venice and three Academy Awards, including Best Director for Ang Lee, and when it lost Best Picture to Crash, some critics accused the Academy of homophobia. Beyond that argument it leaves a quieter question: what becomes of a life whose truest part can exist only in hiding, and whether the fear that kept Ennis safe was the same fear that cost him Jack.